my name can be of any use to you, my dear
Grampus," said C. J., "I need hardly tell you
how completely it is at your service." When
Grampus told his legal adviser whose testimony
he had secured, the lawyer looked a little blue,
and remarked that he thought "some gentleman
of greater ability would have been better for the
purpose." Grampus broke out at this into a
long tirade concerning the extraordinary abilities
of C. J., and how nobody else living could
serve his cause so well in the present emergency.
But the lawyer seemed still unconvinced, and
said that he should have preferred the testimony
of Thunderson, or of Shammy, R.A., or somebody
of that sort, very much indeed.

There was quite a little gathering of intellectual
characters in the court on the day when
Grampus's case was to come on. The habitués of
Poets' Corner were all there to a man. There
was a good deal of smiling and whispering
(apparently facetious) among the gentlemen of the
robe, as there often is when a cause of an
unusual kind, and with no very momentous issue
at stake, is about to come on.

The facetious tone was evidently to predominate
in this case throughout. Even the counsel
for the plaintiff, Grampus, fell very early into
this line of business, and there was
something, too, almost apologetical about his
address, as if he really felt that it was a very
unimportant business, and hardly worth all
this disturbance. The artist, he said, belonged
proverbially to the genus irritabile. He could
not be judged by the same rules as other people.
And if this was the case with the artist in
general, he believed that he might say that it was
specially so with this artist in particular, he
being of a peculiarly nervous temperament, and
very easily put off his intellectual feed—if he
might so express himself—and incapacitated for
thought and study. There was a great deal to
this purpose, and the jury were asked if they
knew what a dog was, and what the barking of a
dog was, and whether the noise made by a
barking dog was compatible with deep thought
and serious meditation? And then the witnesses
began to appear.

At length the moment came when Caractacus
Jones Brogg was called. I had never before
known what those initials C. J. stood for, and they
rather staggered me. He ascended the witness-
box steps with considerable dignity, and we
thought to ourselves that now, at any rate, we
should be serious.

The preliminaries of swearing the witness
having been gone through, the witness was
asked whether he was a friend of plaintiff's, how
long he had known him, what he knew of his
temperament, habits of life, and the like. And
then Mr. Codger (the counsel for the plaintiff)
thought he might get, without further delay, to
matters bearing directly on the subject of the
suit.

MR. CODGER. And now, Mr. Brogg, I will,
with your permission, ask you what, in your
opinion, would be the effect upon such a mind as
that of your friend of the peculiar nuisance of
which he is come here to complain?

WITNESS. My opinion is, that it would utterly
incapacitate him for all mental exertion of
what kind soever, and that it would render him
generally irritable and unsettled.

MR. CODGER. Is it your opinion that my client
would suffer in purse by such interruption?

WITNESS. Undoubtedly, seeing that he would
be disqualified from pursuing those studies
through whose agency his very exquisite works
are produced.

MR. CODGER. You regard my client's works
as works of great value?

WITNESS. I do.

MR. CODGER. They are a great deal sought
after, I apprehend?

WITNESS. They are—ahem! ahem!—yes, a
great deal sought after.

MR. CODGER. So that, in fact, if my client fails
to produce these works for which he is so
distinguished, he is failing to gain a certain sum of
money which would otherwise have come to him?

WITNESS. Which in the event of the work
finding a purchaser would certainly have come
to him. Yes.

CODGER. Just so. Then it appears to you
that the individual who by any means hinders
my client from producing work, does in fact
hinder him from receiving money?

WITNESS. Supposing, as I have said before,
that the work on which he was engaged should
find a purchaser when it was completed.

CODGER, (uneasily). Just so. Thank you, Mr.
Brogg. I shall not require to trouble you any
further.

But though the counsel for the plaintiff had
done with Mr. Brogg, the counsel for the defendant
had not, and he now rose with a very evil
expression of countenance, to invite the witness's
attention to a few questions of his own. The
name of this gentleman was Screw, and he was
considered a dab at cross-examination

SCREW. Stop a moment, Mr.—eh,—Mr.—
Brogg. There are one or two little matters which
have come out in the course of your examination
in chief, and in connexion with which I will, with
your permission, put one or two very simple
questions. It was the policy of my learned friend—and
I will say that my learned friend is as bold as he is
learned to adopt such a policy—to aim at
convincing the jury that my client, by keeping a
little dog upon his premises, hinders this Mr.
Grampus from working. This point of course I
shall presently be in a position to controvert,
but for the present let it pass. My learned
friend next goes a step further, and insinuates
that to hinder this Mr. Grampus from working,
is, in other words, to stand between this gentleman
and the reception of certain sums of money
of greater or less magnitude. Now this kind of
language used by my learned friend gives us to
understand that Mr. Grampus's pictures and
money—sums of money—are convertible terms.